I’m going to be honest and admit that not much reading has happened this month. Not even on holidays – a prime opportunity, whether beachside or idling away hours on a plane. I had a lot on my mind and couldn’t concentrate. Things improved a little (although at the cost of my health!) when I…
It’s been a hectic, tiring month. I’ll explain more in a post to come later in the week, but for the moment let me capture the feeling by saying it’s taken me a couple of minutes just to compose these first two (rather boring!) sentences. It’s no coincidence then that two of these books should…
I’m afraid this month’s reading update is rather meagre. Not in quality – the opposite, in fact! – but because I haven’t been reading very much, skipping from one book to another. The reason? Tiredness. Reading Matters is almost here! (FYI: there are only tickets left for the Public Day). I began The Dispossessed and…
Hello, I’m back! It feels like ages! Three weeks is a long time, at least for me. It’s been a great month for reading too, so I’ll get straight to business. Norse Mythology by Neil Gaiman is exactly what I’d expected: accessible without being simplistic, these tales are lovingly (re)told by one of the world’s…
One of my favourite books over the past decade is Born To Run, so I was very keen to read its follow-up-of-sorts, Natural Born Heroes. Christopher McDougall is one of those non-fiction writers with such a flair for telling engrossing stories that it’s not surprising they find fame and acclaim, but I think he stretches…
Read / February 27th, 2017
I set myself a pretty ambitious reading target for 2017 over at Goodreads: 60 books. This is part of the reason, I’ll admit, for picking Three Stories by JM Coetzee off the library bookshelf. 70-something pages long, I was able to read it over a train trip into the city. There are writers that are harder to…
Read / January 30th, 2017
I’d only read one Patricia Highsmith novel before picking up Carol, and as soon as I started reading this I thought to myself, Why haven’t I read more? The other novel was The Talented Mr. Ripley and both times I’ve admired her style – intelligent, observant, dark. If you’re unfamiliar with the story surrounding Carol‘s publication,…
Read / December 15th, 2016
When we went away recently, I brought along Creative Intelligence: How to Build Creative Confidence, Capacity, and Capitalism by Bruce Nussbaum thinking that I wouldn’t get through it. Turns out it was the only book I finished. (I’ve done much better this year for non-fiction than fiction and I’m not sure why.) Business books which delve…
Read / November 15th, 2016
This hasn’t been a great month for reading. I’ve been preoccupied with keynote writing (keep your eyes peeled for this coming Thursday’s post), among other things. When I’ve found myself with some time to pick up a title, I soon put it back down again. This doesn’t reflect on their quality, more on the lack of…
